Page 101 - Electronic Commerce

Chapter 2

program that could read HTML and use HTML hyperlinks to navigate from page to page
on computers anywhere on the Internet. Mosaic was the first Web browser that became
76 widely available for personal computers, and some Web surfers still use it today.
Programmers quickly realized that a system of pages connected by hypertext links
would provide many new Internet users with an easy way to access information on the
Internet. Businesses recognized the profit-making potential offered by a worldwide
network of easy-to-use computers. In 1994, Andreessen and other members of the
University of Illinois Mosaic team joined with James Clark of Silicon Graphics to found
Netscape Communications (the company was acquired by Time Warner in 1998 but was
disbanded in 2003). Its first product, the Netscape Navigator Web browser program based
on Mosaic, was an instant success. Netscape became one of the fastest-growing software
companies ever. Microsoft created its Internet Explorer Web browser and entered the
market soon after Netscape’s success became apparent. Today, Internet Explorer is the
most widely used Web browser in the world. Its main competitor, Mozilla Firefox, is a
descendant of Netscape Navigator.
The number of Web sites has grown even more rapidly than the Internet itself. The
number of Web sites is currently estimated at more than 700 million, and individual Web
pages number more than 300 billion because each Web site might include hundreds or
even thousands of individual Web pages. Therefore, nobody really knows how many Web
pages exist. Figure 2-3 shows the overall rapid growth rate of the Web. Other than a brief
consolidation period during the 2001–2002 economic downturn, the Web has grown at a
consistently rapid rate.

800

700
Estimated number of Web sites (in millions) 500
600

400

300
200

100
0
1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Year

Adapted from Netcraft Web Server Surveys (http://www.netcraft.com) and author’s estimates
FIGURE 2-3 Growth of the World Wide Web

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